


Silt

by provocative_envy



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 13:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: Sansa wasn’t the first Stark he ever failed, or even the first Stark he ever loved.She was, though, the first Stark he ever wanted to be better for.





	Silt

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so there was like a weird glitch when i watched s8e3 and i think i missed a couple of minutes towards the end??? haha super glad arya showed up in time to save theon though that was a cool plot twist

 

* * *

 

He expects to die.

He’s made his peace with himself—with the man he was, first and foremost, and then the man he wasn’t, the man he couldn’t be, would never be, not if he had a hundred years and a thousand chances—and he’s made his peace with the people who matter. Yara. Jon. Arya. Bran.

Sansa.

He expects to die.

He’s resigned to the necessity of it, to the poetry of it, one last noble sacrifice to atone for his sins, his crimes, his betrayals—grievous in nature and countless in number, heavy enough on his conscience that forgetting his own name had once felt like penance, not punishment. He can’t bury those memories, either, can’t swallow around the razor-sharp, rust-jagged edges of them, because he knows, he knows that he wasn’t Theon Greyjoy, not for a while, just as he knows that the real agony was in the finding of himself, not the losing. He could believe that a mirror was simply blurry or cracked or dirty or broken, but he couldn’t ignore the gleaming wave of long, copper-red hair against the bone-white backdrop of a snow bank or the sweet, pleading voice he didn’t want to recognize, didn’t want to listen to—

He deserves to die.

He’s prepared to die.

He expects to die.

He just doesn’t expect to be so _opposed_ to the idea when it finally seems like it’s going to happen.

 

* * *

 

He’s always been a little bit of a coward, is the thing.

He’s always been a little bit selfish.

 

* * *

 

Ultimately, it’s Arya who kills the Night King because of course it is.

 _Of course_.

Theon’s grip goes slack around the spine of his bow, tears and sweat and freezing flakes of snow dripping down his face, into his eyes, his open mouth, the torn, gaping collar of his shirt, his armor—and then he’s falling to his knees like his legs have been cut from under him, throat constricting around what might be a laugh, scratchy and desperate and well-worn, well- _earned_ , his chest heaving and his shoulders slumping. The air is frigidly cold, gnashing its teeth at his skin, and the vast, desolate eeriness of the starless sky is overwhelming. He smells smoke. He smells ash. He smells blood.

Behind him, Bran is saying something to Arya, but Theon can’t hear much more than that, not over the sound of the roaring, relentless rush of blood to his head.  

He’s intimately acquainted with his own body. With what it can do, with what it can take, with how far he can push himself, how far he can _be_ pushed, before he crumbles.

But like so much else now, his understanding of where he is presently— _home,_ he’s _home_ —returns to him in pieces. Fragments. He’s in the woods with Robb and Jon and Bran and _Rickon_ and Ned Stark and Arya’s snuck out again, tumbling down from a nearby tree with that stupid little sword drawn, scaring off all the game, and there’s the background thrum of good-natured teasing and half-hearted wrestling into a blanket of snow and moss and rot-speckled leaves while the breeze whistles by and Sansa waits at the castle, in front of the big, hulking doors to the great hall with her hands clasped as they trek inside, pretending to sneer at the mud streaking their hands and faces even while she dips her chin and casts giggling, bashful glances at him—

Winterfell.

No.

Robb.

_No._

None of it’s real, none of it’s—

 _Sansa_.

 

* * *

 

Sansa wasn’t the first Stark he ever failed, or even the first Stark he ever loved.

She was, though, the first Stark he ever wanted to be _better_ for.  

 

* * *

 

Winterfell is in ruins, charred stone and shattered window glass and dead bodies piled high in the courtyard—but Theon is running past it, his lungs burning and his muscles spongy with exhaustion, ducking through collapsed arches and tripping over abandoned weapons, skidding to an uncertain halt when he reaches the entrance to the crypt.

“ _Sansa_ ,” he gasps, or at least he thinks he gasps, means to gasp, but he can’t quite tell if he manages to get even that much out—a name, it’s just a name, it’s just a _name_ —because the scope of his relief, the sheer, blinding magnitude of it, has rendered him as speechless as he is suddenly, irrepressibly, violently grateful.

Sansa is standing three or four yards away from him, holding herself perfectly still, one hand clutching the soot-stained frame of a door hanging partially off its hinges as she stares and stares and _stares_ at him, her eyes, that clear, cool, crystalline green, shimmering with tears and her face uncharacteristically open, uncharacteristically _expressive_ —

It’s a gift, he realizes, to be looked at this way.

To be allowed to look back.

“Please,” he whispers, lips trembling, dry and wind-chapped, another unfamiliar swell of laughter tingeing his voice, smoothing over the raspy, battle-thin shards of it. “Please, don’t cry.”

She chokes out an answering laugh, rushing to fling her arms around his neck, the fur on her cloak brushing the underside of his jaw. “I thought I was going to die,” she says, words muffled. Wondering. “I was waiting for it.”

“Yeah.” He smiles into her hair, wistful, unfocused, miraculously sincere, and tightens his arm around her waist, flattening his palm against the small of her back to draw her in closer. “Yeah, me, too.”

There’s a hopeful, almost brittle moment of silence.

And then she’s moving her head, tilting it, searching and curious, and he’s meeting her halfway, following her lead—

It’s a kiss that’s barely a kiss, soft and raw and quiet and tender-hot—a promise to keep, a secret to share—and he isn’t sure either of them bother to breathe through it, not until he pulls back a bit and she responds with a faint, disgruntled chirp, immediately pushing _forward_ , her nose bumping his cheek and her fingers curling in his hair and her lips gently, clumsily, earnestly grazing his own.

It’s brand-new, the feeling.

An ache.

A _yearning_.

 

* * *

 

He was born with frost and iron and thunder and salt and the vengeful, cavernous rage of a drowned god brewing in his veins.

He’s harder to kill than all that.  

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> [i don't even really go here but come join me in hell anyway](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)


End file.
